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Strangely enough i knew a P in the same area about 15 years back who was a compulsive liar, his party trick was winding up the bouncers at rock clubs in Leeds until they were ready to smack him and then announcing that he was 'haemophilic' and would sue them if they hit him, then his ex claimed to have seen him shooting up.

It got nasty when some guy who knew him from where he'd lived previously mentioned he was meant to have been busted several times for killing small animals :( which was unfortunate because i knew someone this guy had houseshared with and had several strange animal deaths and dissappearances while he was there :( and then he reputedly got busted for that again and went to jail, he didn;t deny he'd been to jail but claimed it was a fit up for armed robbery because he'd held a shotgun that was later used in a robbery.

Probably not the same P. I guess there are more than a few quite prolific liars out there.
 
On the subject of compulsive liars -

Had a friend who was always making up stories. I believed her until I noticed her telling me some load of tripe that I knew she'd told someone else first.

Anyway... one day she told me all about a family who were witnesses in a terrorism case who'd been given a safe house in the next city.

I happened to work with a Special Constable from there so I asked her about it. She made enquiries and found no truth whatsoever in it.
If it were true but she couldn't tell me about it she'd have said that, so Mate's tale was all bollocks.

People like that are dangerous.
 
:sbump:

This thread deserves a :bump:

Let's hear more about compulsive liars we have known.

:boss::rim::alien::sick::fence::fish::sherlock::reap::bomb: etc
 
Let's hear more about compulsive liars we have known.


My (possibly late) mother! Some of my earliest memories are of listening to her talk to someone (family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, people on the bus, the GP....) and thinking " But it wasn't like that, I was there." And more specifically thinking things like "But the house doesn't have a lawn in front it has flower beds."

She said things that, as far as I could or can see, made no difference to the actual subject. She would add a throwaway lie :rollingw:

Bafflement turned to rage when I realised that she's been lying every time she said my beloved grandparents were seriously ill. She told the school that, age about 9, I was a destructive evil child and should be kept away from matches and scissors!

I mean :wtf:. Seriously, WHY?????

EDIT to add that if people can explain this to me then I would love it! :itslove:

===============
The subsequent line of discussion about pathological parental lying and its negative effects has been moved to:

They Fuck You Up, Your Mum & Dad
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/they-fuck-you-up-your-mum-dad.13361/
 
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Back in the late 80’s, I was travelling by train from the far(ish) north of Scotland back to my base near Edinburgh....a trip of a good couple of hours or so. As a serviceman I would be fairly evident to fellow servicemen, not least because of my Forces kitbag that I was always lumping around in those days.
I was joined en-route by another chap of the same service (similarly carrying his kitbag.....I guess that’s what we did back then!) who sat opposite me and we got to talking......or more him talking about all the amazing things he had done in his life and me listening. It didn’t take long before I decided that most of his claims were complete and utter bollocks but I really couldn’t be arsed to call him out on his BS.
He was also lugging his acoustic guitar with him so I turned the conversation to that........Well of course he was a semi-professional musician and was only in the Forces to see a bit of the world until fame and fortune beckoned. Not only that but he was a damned accomplished poet as well.
He then proudly took out a notebook and regaled me with one of his latest masterpieces......a piece that he called “Horse latitudes”

I listened with a growing sense of familiarity with the piece until he got to a particular line that mentioned the rather odd phrase “mute nostril agony” when it came back to me!

“Hang on a sec” says I.....”Isn’t that by Jim Morrison of The Doors?”

Well you’ve never seen anyone clam up as quickly in all of your life.....he shut up, red faced, turned and looked out of the window.......we sat in almost total silence for the rest of the journey apart from a few general bits of conversation and a mumbled goodbye as we got off at Edinburgh.

I guess that he never considered that another young chap like myself at the time, would have any knowledge of the works of Jim Morrison. Indeed it was only because of my girlfriend (now wife) being massively into The Doors that I had even heard of that particular piece at all. I just don’t know what he would get out of making up such a ridiculous claim to a complete stranger.....it’s certainly an odd compulsion.
 
I’ve known two, one I’d say was more of a fantasist and amusingly so. I met her at school and still keep in touch. The things that happened to her, that she did or got involved in...yet her life was and is perfectly normal. I understand now she has pretty severe mental health issues going back to childhood and I think her fantasising was a way of coping. Still, I always liked her; she was and is incredibly humorous and she harmed no-one but herself.

The other was a guy my ex and I met one year in the 90’s. Then the guy had apparently been in Afghanistan with the army, but was currently broke, so he would just hang around for weeks with anyone who would buy him drinks or cigarettes (me). Then he vanished for a while and came back saying he’d been on the oil rigs, but was broke again. He turned up one night in the winter banging on the door asking to stay over. It was so cold that we let him, and he was gone in the morning but had wet the bed.

The thing is, if he had said he was in dire straights no-one would have thought badly of him at all; a lot of people have problems, but it was his consistent lying and exaggerations and in the end his sponging for months, that was unbearable.
 
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I’ve known two, one I’d say was more of a fantasist and amusingly so. I met her at school and still keep in touch. The things that happened to her, that she did or got involved in...yet her life was and is perfectly normal. I understand snow she has pretty severe mental health issues going back to childhood and I think her fantasising was a way of coping. Still, I always liked her; she was and is incredibly humorous and she harmed no-one but herself.

The other was a guy my ex and I met one year in the 90’s. Then the guy had apparently been in Afghanistan with the army, but was currently broke, so he would just hang around for weeks with anyone who would buy him drinks or cigarettes (me). Then he vanished for a while and came back saying he’d been on the oil rigs, but was broke again. He turned up one night in the winter banging on the door asking to stay over. It was so cold that we let him, and he was gone in the morning but had wet the bed.

The thing is, if he had said he was in dire straights no-one would have thought badly of him at all; a lot of people have problems, but it was his consistent lying and exaggerations and in the end his sponging for months, that was unbearable.
I think for a lot of people it is difficult for them to admit they have a problem, so for them it is easier to make up a fanciful story, in a way to save face, because its easier than admitting the truth.
 
This is practically also one for the co incidence thread, because this chap came into my head whilst I was out running today.

We'd dated a couple of times and he told me a very long story about how he was something in MI5 and he did bodyguarding for the Middle Eastern royal families. He had a house in France with a pool where he spent every summer, but he was temporarily 'between houses' in the UK as he'd sold one and was waiting to complete on another. He told me all about the fancy car he drove. When I eventually went to the house he was staying it was like an old lady's home. There was no evidence of his car outside although he told me I could see it if I looked through the garage window of the next door house (!). I figured out that the whole thing was a tissue of lies, he was unemployed, lived with his mum and the picture he showed me of his 'home in France' was taken when he was on a villa holiday.

I have no idea why he went through such a charade. He was a perfectly nice chap, just, obviously, with not a lot going for him. He would have got on far better if he'd just told the truth and found himself a nice, homeloving girl, rather than trying (rather ineptly) to spin a lot of fantastic stories that were disproved the second you went to his house.

I did, rather naughtily, suggest that he went over to France and lived in his house over there whilst he was 'between houses', he didn't quite know what to say to that. The lies were so obvious, and so enormous, how he ever thought anyone was going to believe them was beyond me.
 
There is a man in Montrose. As long as I've known him he has never worked. However, the plethora of jobs he he claims he has had is incredible -, off the top of my head -

Taxi Driver ( he doesn't drive)

A bouncer ( fair enough but he told me last year that he was made redundant 15 years ago and got a pension worth 35k a year from this job)

The best on was a LION TAMER. this was said in all seriousness to a group of us and we all managed to keep a straight face and NOT call him out for his blether while he waxed lyrical about it.
 
l used to be good mates with a bloke who’s a compulsive liar. l still see him most weeks (when society was normal, all that time ago), but now l just nod distantly at him; at most l’ll pass the time of day, but that’s it.

The bizarre thing about him is that he’s actually done enough in real life to dine out on a different true anecdote every night for the rest of his life!

Here are some things about him that l know for a fact and have verified with my own eyes:

  • He’s a retired senior officer in the UK armed forces
  • His unit was...very much out of the ordinary (is all that l’ll say)
  • He held significant posts of authority in said unit
  • He has worked closely enough with the SAS to get a Christmas card from them
  • He has been arrested by the Russian army, and has a photo to prove it
Since retirement he has:

  • Been headhunted by a large Japanese concern to lecture on his speciality in Japan (more than once, as a long-term resident)
  • Been employed using his special skills in a reputable group’s search for the Loch Ness monster, and has appeared on UK telly while doing it
  • Been employed as an expert witness in serious UK Crown Court cases
- Among other things.

You’d think that was enough, wouldn’t you? But no, he has to tell the most transparent, bullshit whoppers. Repeatedly. To people who’d know better, like me.

An example? He was once stationed at a well-known UK armed forces base, and asserted to me that staff there had noticed that one large building seemed to be 40 feet longer, when measured from the outside, than from the inside. When a false wall at the end was knocked down, it revealed an intact WW2 German Tiger tank! He and l both have a keen and well-informed interest in such things. Even as he told me this load of old b******s, he must have known that l knew it was a LOB, but he spieled it off nonetheless...

Another? He had a mate in the RAF, who had a Triumph Spitfire with the personalised number plate FLY 1T. Said mate had been killed when he approached an (obstacle) far too fast, and instead of braking/steering, had reflexively “pulled back on the stick” to try and gain altitude. (a) Cobblers! and (b) How was that established? Do Triumphs have “black boxes” fitted?

For almost two decades l just looked blankly at him as he reeled off whopper after whopper, then one day l just decided, “Enough”, and cut him off.

It’s a damn shame as he’s an intelligent, fun, generous, diverting bloke, but l’d reached my limit.

As another mate of mine used to say about a bullshitter he used to know, “If you’ve got a black cat, he’s got one that’s blacker.”

maximus otter
 
The best on was a LION TAMER. this was said in all seriousness to a group of us and we all managed to keep a straight face and NOT call him out for his blether while he waxed lyrical about it.
When someone starts this sort of drivel I HAVE to question them about it. I'd pick up a chair and ask him how he held it to stave off an angry lion and if that went well I'd demand he demonstrate the correct terminology and tone of voice to address the lion.
 
When someone starts this sort of drivel I HAVE to question them about it. I'd pick up a chair and ask him how he held it to stave off an angry lion and if that went well I'd demand he demonstrate the correct terminology and tone of voice to address the lion


 
Most people lie, at least occasionally, to avoid or reduce the consequences of their misdeeds, or to gain an advantage, or simply to impress. Who amongst us has not misrepresented our budget when buying a car, or claimed to already have something that a salesman is pushing at us?

However, the compulsive liar is a much stranger creature. I have worked with several.


One former colleague, now retired, was a short dumpy and unathletic man, who claimed to be Greek, although some people think even that detail was a fantasy.

This chap told me, and many other colleagues, that he had been the captain of a Greek naval submarine and that "every morning when we left the harbour" he "gathered all the crew together" and made a rousing speech ending with the famous "Spartan" saying, "Today is a good day to die." (This is in fact commonly attributed to the Sioux leader, Crazy Horse.) You don't need to know much about submarines to realise they don't leave harbour "every morning" but go on patrols lasting weeks or months, and that they have very cramped quarters, unsuited to gathering the whole crew for the captain to make a speech.

This same chap also claimed to have been in the special forces and personally in charge of training the SEALs. The only official SEALs unit is American, although the Royal Thai Navy also has a unit often referred to as the Seals. I doubt that either had a Greek senior training officer about 5 feet tall. (150 cm or so.)

He also told me that he fought in the former Yugoslavia as special forces working against the Vatican forces that were trying to eliminate the Orthodox Christians.

Another anecdote was about the time he was parachuted on a special mission, landed straight down a well and was unable to escape until his unit eventually heard his cries for help and hauled him out.

Since he retired, another colleague has had a number of text messages from him saying how he has been called up and told to be on standby for the imminent war between Greece and Turkey.

He also had a fictitious wife (sometimes deceased, sometimes not), a fictitious villa, and a fictitious yacht, all supported by photos that a colleague identified as being readily available images on a simple Google image search.

It's sad, because he's not a bad chap, and he is clearly lonely.

On the general subject of "special forces", I have a theory that "The ex SAS" is the biggest regiment in the British army. I have met so many people who are "ex SAS".


I think of another colleague as "Front Row F..." (his name begins with the F sound but I won't post it here as a precaution). You only need to mention a band from the late 1950s on, but especially the 60s or 70s, and he was in the front row at their concert - sometimes because he slipped through a hole in the fence as a child to get into a festival. Hendrix waved at him once.

Other famous people often drank in his local (in a small English east midlands town) an in most cases, he has some "insider knowledge" that the famous person is not well thought of locally.

In the case of famous people who were very obviously not born locally, he happened to bump into them once "with their retinue". Only yesterday he was telling me how he once walked past a nail bar in Nottingham and saw Dolly Parton having her nails done, while one of her minders as blocking the door.

Also, after his dad, who fought in the war (presumably true) died, he discovered that his dad had been widely known as "Mad Jack H..." There must have been more people known as Mad Jack so-and-so in WW2 than there are "last pubs in England."


At a former workplace one of the women had a bit of a reputation as a fantasist. As one of the others said to me, "If you tell her on Friday that your Grandad was interested in archaeology, she'll come in on Monday and say her Grandad just found a dinosaur skeleton when he was digging the garden."
 
...As another mate of mine used to say about a bullshitter he used to know, “If you’ve got a black cat, he’s got one that’s blacker.”

Early noughties I worked with an Icelandic guy who would top every story ever told within earshot. (He’d also done every job anyone else ever had – from driving HGV, to working in a bakery, to painting oil rigs - but always in circumstances that made his experience much more interesting.)

At first, assuming that it was just a product of the DNA responsible for the Sagas requiring some kind of out, everyone kind of rolled with it. But it soon got very tiring.

And it was no mean feat to top a story with that crowd. The company was based in Leith and there were ex trawlermen, ex-military, rig workers, kayakers, climbers - all kinds of experience from several corners of the world, with a good and steady supply of ripping yarns. Storytelling in those situations acts as a kind of vent – it releases pressure, offering a momentary distraction from the trials of the day, and it can glue a group of totally disparate individuals together in a way that sanitised team building exercises do not. I'm a listener – I love a good story, and I missed it when break times started getting quieter. Then I realised that the guy's inability to let a tale alone had led to a kind of exhaustion – people just didn’t have the energy to act as springboards for his ego anymore, so they simply stopped talking.

So, one day I invented Bullshit Bingo. I'm ashamed to say that it’s really rather inane - and that there are really no rules or structure to it. Its sole intent is for people to invent tales that are outrageous, but still just about believable, and to do so in turns, to a point where the final tale – always of course from the guy who could top everyone’s story - can only top the previous one by including something so utterly outrageous that it simply cannot be true and completely busts the welds of believability. At which point everyone shouts 'FUUUCKIIIN’ BINGO!' at the top of their voice.

Despite the nebulous structure, it kind of worked - and was sometimes very funny, often due to the heroic and sometimes painful efforts made to keep a straight face by those involved.

The weird thing is, I'm not at all sure that the guy ever had the least clue what we were doing. Nor the boss - who was a good friend of his. It was only years later that I explained the reason for the occasional eruptions of a heartily shouted, ' FUUUCKIIIN’ BINGO!' at lunchtime, and occasionally in the pub after knock.

I often wished I'd written all the stories down: Taw Tales Frae Leith – Or, How Tae Outblether a Gobshite in a Pure Dead Bruwiant Manner.

(My favourite was the guy who had inadvertently invented one of Bosnia’s most popular dishes after getting caught in a mortar barrage while trying to cook lamb hotpot using army rations. My own was a rather more pedestrian affair involving being run over by a hot air balloon while walking in the Brecon Beacons. Neither true, of course – but they really should be.)
 
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Early noughties I worked with an Icelandic guy who would top every story ever told within earshot. (He’d also done every job anyone else ever had – from driving HGV, to working in a bakery, to painting oil rigs - but always in circumstances that made his experience much more interesting.)

At first, assuming that it was just a product of the DNA responsible for the Sagas requiring some kind of out, everyone kind of rolled with it. But it soon got very tiring.

And it was no mean feat to top a story with that crowd. The company was based in Leith and there were ex trawlermen, ex-military, rig workers, kayakers, climbers - all kinds of experience from several corners of the world, with a good and steady supply of ripping yarns. Storytelling in those situations acts as a kind of vent – it releases pressure, offering a momentary distraction from the trials of the day, and it can glue a group of totally disparate individuals together in a way that sanitised team building exercises do not. I'm a listener – I love a good story, and I missed it when break times started getting quieter. Then I realised that the guy's inability to let a tale alone had led to a kind of exhaustion – people just didn’t have the energy to act as springboards for the guy’s ego anymore, so they simply stopped talking.

So, one day I invented Bullshit Bingo. I'm ashamed to say that it’s really rather inane - and that there are really no rules or structure to it. Its sole intent is for people to invent tales that are outrageous, but still just about believable, and to do so in turns, to a point where the final tale – always of course from the guy who could top everyone’s story - can only top the previous one by including something so utterly outrageous that it simply cannot be true and completely busts the welds of believability. At which point everyone shouts 'FUUUCKIIIN’ BINGO!' at the top of their voice.

Despite the nebulous structure, it kind of worked - and was sometimes very funny, often due to the heroic and sometimes painful efforts made to keep a straight face by those involved.

The weird thing is, I'm not at all sure that the guy ever had the least clue what we were doing. Nor the boss - who was a good friend of his. It was only years later that I explained the reason for the occasional eruptions of a heartily shouted, ' FUUUCKIIIN’ BINGO!' at lunchtime, and occasionally in the pub after knock.

I often wished I'd written all the stories down: Taw Tales Frae Leith – Or, How Tae Outblether a Gobshite in a Pure Dead Bruwiant Manner.

(My favourite was the guy who had inadvertently invented one of Bosnia’s most popular dishes after getting caught in a mortar barrage while trying to cook lamb hotpot using army rations. My own was a rather more pedestrian affair involving being run over by a hot air balloon while walking in the Brecon Beacons. Neither true, of course – but they really should be.)

Your pal reminds me of the occasional character Topper from the excellent Dilbert cartoon strip:

4687de506d6301301d80001dd8b71c47


More Topper.

maximus otter
 
It's absurdly simplistic to talk about compulsive liars - I don't think there is any such thing.
 
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A compulsive liar would be someone who lies but not by choice.
 
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...It's absurdly simplistic to talk about compulsive liars - I don't think there is any such thing. And I still make the point - what is a lie? What is 'truth'?

As with many such morbidities (is that the right word?) it's not the act but the incontinence with which it is used that separates out some people - overconsumption, and maybe fetishization, rather than consumption in and of itself.

I definitely think there is such a thing as a compulsive liar, and I'd mark one of the symptoms as being, not so much the big spectacular untruths, but the compulsion to lie about the little things; things where there appears to be no discernible gain from the untruth - where the lie is the whole point of the lie.

I know at least a couple of people for whom the act of lying seems almost pavlovian in the way it is stimulated by the statements of others, or even simply the environment around them. I once had a short relationship with someone who I soon realised continuously lied about the little things. 'I've got that album'; I've got the same kitchen knives at home'; 'I used the same paint in my bathroom'; 'I went for a walk in the park today' - the lies were always about really inconsequential things, but they were constant, and for some reason very much more unsettling than the odd big bold piece of bullshit.

I've mentioned elsewhere the atrocious pair of twats who own the flat next to mine. They are both relentless liars - but whereas she is a sleekit manipulator who lies constantly as a means to an end, he is a total fantasist, and thick as mince with it. He has landed an airliner in Tenerife after the pilot had a heart attack, and once climbed a sheer cliff in order to rescue a panicking tombstoner - knocking the guy out with a single punch before putting him over his shoulder and jumping into the sea himself.

Seriously. This is an adult male with a family.

However, outside these big lies he also bullshits constantly about the detail: he'll tell me that he just decorated our shared entrance (when the paintbrushes are still drying in my kitchen); he replaced the front door his tenants damaged (when I've still got the angry letters I sent asking for payment for all the work I did getting it fixed); his family also hears noise from the neighbours at night, so they should stop complaining about his tenants (he hasn't lived here for nearly twenty years); he built the shed in my garden (what the fuck?) Etc...ad fucking nauseam.

It's endless and exhausting. (I'm so angry with those two that I almost don't trust myself to be alone with them any more.)
 
I have two compulsive liars that stick in my memory. One seemed to have a rich fantasy life and would make up all sorts of rubbish to try to impress everyone. The other was rather more sinister, it was more mischievous in nature, with a definite look of mockery in his eyes. I think the guy was a sociopath who felt the more he could get away with, the more superior he was to the dolts who believed him. He was very intelligent and would mix all the wild claims in with real events, and was constantly trying to mess with people's heads. Creepy guy.
 
I'm not saying that the past few pages are without interest, but they're largely about a whole other set of subjects beyond 'compulsive lying'.

We'd really like not to have to unravel and reassign it all over the show, so could we move back on topic, please?
 
I'm not saying that the past few pages are without interest, but they're largely about a whole other set of subjects beyond 'compulsive lying'.

We'd really like not to have to unravel and reassign it all over the show, so could we move back on topic, please?

Do you think it might be possible for contributors to this thread to, you know, read my requests and have a stab at following them?

I have asked nicely.
 
It's absurdly simplistic to talk about compulsive liars - I don't think there is any such thing.

edit: There is certainly pathological lying, what control people have over it is another matter.
 
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Do you think it might be possible for contributors to this thread to, you know, read my requests and have a stab at following them?

I have asked nicely.
Been trying to get it baxk on track all day lol
 
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